Life Serves Meals That Are Difficult to Swallow

I always wanted to be a Leave it to Beaver family, with me playing the role of June Cleaver. My script would place me in the kitchen making breakfast each morning and at the front door passing out lunch sacks as the family walked out the door to work and school. For several years this proved achievable.

Unfortunately, there came a time when behind the scenes activities would have made a juicy reality show episode because our daughter morphed into a teen. I had always felt reality TV isn’t even somewhat representative of real life until our home morphed from the Cleaver family to the Osbournes.

Well, no matter how hard the trying times, they made me stronger. I know, “Gag me with a spoon,” but it was true for me. There was a time I kept repeating the cliché, “What doesn’t kill me will make me stronger.” And I relied on the Bible passage that assures Christians that God will not challenge us with more trials than we can overcome. I started to question God’s understanding of my tolerance level.

At one of the lowest moments of my life, my husband Randy placed everything into perspective.

Our daughter suffered from depression, anorexia, heard voices that had her convinced of her worthlessness, and carved regularly on her arms. The professionals explained the carving created physical pain that was easier for her to address than the physiological/emotional pain.

On this particular night, I laid a blanket and pillow on the floor beside the bed to be her guardian angel through the night. Randy sat on the edge of the bed as he told her good night.

Everything in her life was out of proportion. Her grandmother who had always been a major player in her life was dying; her boyfriend had broken her heart; her hamster died; there was little possibility that she would pass math this semester; and her parents didn’t understand why she should be able to stay out later. All things that in the mind of a teenage girl are of equal significance. Nothing at the time made her happy. Life just didn’t provide her contentment and because people tend to strike out at those they love, she blamed us, her parents.

She cried; she turned her back; she kicked; she screamed until finally on this night Randy looked at her and exclaimed, “Honey, life is a shit sandwich. You have to get used to it and accept the bad with the good.”

I remember thinking, “He must be insane.” What a crazy thing to say to a depressed child when we should be encouraging and reassuring. But I was surprised when she looked into his face and smiled — for the first time in a long time.

My image of the Leave it to Beaver mother was idealistic. I believed I wit my job to keep everyone happy and clean, to fix emotions just as dad fixed cars.

I must have repressed all the arguments and tears of my teenage years. Randy’s statement made me flashback through the numerous negative events of my past: parents fighting, sibling’s drug use, uncles’ alcoholism, grandmother’s illnesses, and father-in-law’s death. I had eaten a lot of crap in my day and survived making it essential to balance the bad with the good.

Many dreadful experiences had been bookend with bread. Sometimes two slices of white, homemade bread supported, and comforted me through. Sometimes wheat bread provided the ingredients to make me strong and healthy in the mist of trouble. And sometimes the hard crust of French bread shielded me from harm. I learned that if I ate the filling without the bread it was a whole heap to handle — too spicy, too thick, too overwhelming. Our daughter chose the food she ate and did not get a balanced diet.

Our younger daughter made an insightful observation after watching the movie Runaway Bride with Julia Roberts and Richard Gere. In the movie, Roberts repeatedly walked towards the alter only to turn and run at the last minute prior to saying, “I do.”

Gere’s character noticed and mentioned that the strong-willed bride didn’t know what she wanted and supported this statement with evidence that with each new boyfriend Roberts changed the way she ate her eggs to match the boyfriend’s preference: scrambled, poached, in an omelet or sunny-side up. I will never forget when Sue at the age of eleven said, “Mom, Mary doesn’t know how she likes her eggs.”

All the counselors, doctors, and other professionals hadn’t begun to state the problem so succinctly. I discovered Mary didn’t need me to plan the menu and cook meals but instead to direct her to healthy choices.

Ultimately, she had to learn to receive all life had to offer, swallow, digest, and then move on to the next meal. I learned my role as mother required me to teach my children to make good choices instead of telling them the choice to make.

My husband and I could not shelter our girls from life forever and grew to understand that our role as parents required us to help our children make informed decisions. We had to let them see the entire picture of the stage surrounding them, experience reality, and reassure them that no matter how difficult life, family would always provide the bread to hold it all together.

As hard as it seemed, I had to let them consume a little shit to appreciate what life had to offer.

Read more from Brenda Mahler

The Teen Brain is Under Construction

Emotional Pain is Real